Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3)

by Stephen Moss

They spoke of one of an unpleasantly long list of technological issues they faced before they could even begin to attempt the actual task of opening a travelable wormhole. A task that, in and of itself, begged more questions than they could yet know.

  But before that, before they could try to open a door, and before they could try to build a corridor, and a method of travelling that corridor, they needed a door handle. They needed an Accelosphere Generator, and they did not have one on Terminus. Among the many technological marvels they’d had on board at the time of separation, that particular little gem was absent.

  Minnie:

  Birgit: ‘no, minnie, we won’t. but we are getting ahead of ourselves. we are talking about how to know if we have been successful, when i don’t even know how to do what we are trying to do.’

  Minnie:

  Birgit smiled in spite of herself. The real Minnie this was not. But sometimes she said something that was so simple, yet so convoluted, that it couldn’t help but remind Birgit of Minnie’s first conversations, when they had talked endlessly about things as simple as air and form and smiling.

  Birgit: ‘¿maybe you could let me in on the secret?’

  Minnie:

  Birgit laughed out loud now. Sometimes it was hard to forgive this Minnie her inadequacies, but not now. Minnie was trying. She just didn’t have the substrate mass, the grey matter. And when it came to conversing with Birgit, the matter mattered.

  Birgit: ‘ok, mini-minnie, open the conversation, i want to hear this idea, whatever it is.’

  It was not a request, and the response was instantaneous. The stream of consciousness that was a machine conversation lasting days came at her like an open fire hose spraying cold theory into her mind. It was not so much the volume that caused Birgit to start, but the theoretical depth. It was too strong a flavor, too bright a mental beam. Her body tensed as the surge hit her. She was trying to interpret it. Not consciously, this was beyond that. Her whole mind was trying to find the melody, to single out the harmony of truth in the cacophony of possibility that she was receiving.

  She caught just a hint of it. It flashed past like a dash on a highway, a point drawn out to a line that was gone as soon as she saw it. She tried to slow the flow, an act of will calling it to a halt. She was being caught up on an explanation that had apparently been coming for days, and it exceeded even the hot flow she had once ‘enjoyed’ with an embryonic Minnie.

  Now she rewound. The line, seen in real-time, had seemed short, but now, as she followed the concept backward through the quilted mass of idea, she saw it was a long one. Very long, but rooted in a concept so simple that when she saw it she almost cried.

  A point. A point in space. Not an object. A place. Truly still. That place is definable, it is absolute, and it is the easiest thing in the universe to identify. The problem lay in the fact that no object in the universe was anything close to actually still. A person standing in a field is actually moving at a thousand miles an hour around the Earth’s center, which is revolving around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour, which is revolving around the center of the Milky Way at a pace beggaring belief, which is hurtling outward from the point of origin at speeds faster than any craft we had ever made.

  If they hoped to create a wormhole, a wormhole that Terminus could theoretically travel through, or at least use to redirect its trajectory, they would need to be able to do it from Earth, and so would need to be able to transpose that wormhole to another location. It was something that had never even been attempted by the Mobiliei. There had simply been no need. Why create a remote wormhole when that step would only add exponentially to the complexity of the process of managing it.

  But in that complexity might lie an answer. Not the answer, that was still a long way off. But an answer to the question of how to remotely manage a hole in the fabric of the universe. A gap.

  The answer was simple, or so it might seem.

  Don’t.

  Allow the universe to do it for you. For if you wanted to keep something relatively still, not absolutely still, but held in place relative to the immediate space around you—the sun, the Earth, the moon—then the best way to do it was to link it to them.

  Minnie was trying to see if she could use the same gravitational leash that kept the sun’s many satellites in orbit to anchor a remote subspace anomaly. Or rather she was looking to use its absence, not its presence. For a wormhole at the center of a gravitational well would not be much use to anyone, least of all Birgit. She wanted very much to stay out of any planet’s way.

  They could, in theory, use a large fusion generator as a beacon, as those engines used a simulacrum of a gravitational field in order to catalyze and contain the reaction. But without one large enough on hand, they could look to use a Lagrange Point, the point where two gravities cancel each other out. There was one between every twinned cosmic body. Between the sun and each of its planets, between the Earth and the moon. One was forming even now between the Earth and Hekaton.

  Birgit: ‘beautiful, minnie. just beautiful.’

  She allowed her mind to bathe in the concept for a while, and as she did so her own subconscious inevitably started to meddle with the theory, adding her own unique and beautiful genius to it, evolving it as she went.

  In a few hours, when Terminus’s return signal reached Earth, Minnie would start to see the changes. For a just a moment she would fret that her idea, embryonic as it still was, had been shown to an ever more desperate Birgit. But then she would begin to see the theory advancing as Birgit took the concept, layered as it was in a trifle of greater complexity. It would not take more than a moment for Minnie to see what Birgit was starting to do with the idea as she gestated it.

  Invigorated, Minnie would begin sending back her thoughts in reply. It would take a month before their conversation would be complete. A month before they had a theory that could be tested. But now they had a potential way to anchor, to locate a wormhole.

  And so now Minnie needed the method and power to generate it. They already knew, hypothetically, that the distance would be a factor only in terms of scale, as her capacity diminished across the gap. They also knew that Minnie would essentially need to place the subspace actuator in subspace itself, then have it use the gravitational well they chose as a marker to generate another pocket elsewhere.

  Oh, and one other minor issue: Birgit would have to get Terminus to a gravitational well, or find herself a spare subspace generator out here in the cosmos. But that was a relatively minor issue, when you were discussing alchemy.

  Details ranged in their minds as they contemplated the myriad of issues they still faced, and they loved every second of it. They could not speak to each other, but witnessing the beauty of the theory’s evolution was as close to communing as they’d had in months.

  Madeline and Neal began getting requests the next day. They seemed innocent enough, but they were the parts of a machine that would look to play around with another universe. And maybe, just maybe, would allow Minnie’s mother to come home.

  Chapter 18: Schools of Thought

  Wednesday God awoke with a start. He looked around. A pleasant-looking woman stood not far from him, smiling. Wednesday God looked at her confusedly, but the woman did not say anything. She was tall and thin, but soft looking, almost as if she was blurred at the edges. And she was beautiful. Very beautiful.

  Wednesday looked around. The room was large. Larger than any he had ever slept in before. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten here and yet the room was filled with things he recognized. There was a box of toys, also larger and more full than the toy boxes he rem
embered, and the toys looked far nicer than his old ones, but they were of the same ilk, and he was innately curious if he was going to be allowed to play with them.

  On the bed around him were the same off-white sheets he always remembered, and the same greyish blue blanket, only they were so soft. They were clean, he realized, maybe even new, he could not tell. He had rarely seen either condition.

  Wednesday looked at the woman again but still she did not move, she just smiled. Wednesday pulled back the sheet and stretched out his legs. He looked at the woman as if asking if he was allowed to get out of bed, and at this the woman simply nodded.

  Wednesday said, “Where am I?”

  The woman tilted her head to one side, “You are in your new home. Do you like it?”

  Wednesday stared at the woman a while.

  “Where is everyone else?” said Wednesday. “Where is Friday?”

  The woman smiled again. “Friday God is in his own room. As are the others. You will see them soon enough.”

  His own room? He got his own room? Wednesday did not understand that. Friday was his friend, but he was also far from the best of the children. Why would he get his own room? No, that can’t be right. She must mean he is in trouble. Yes, he must be in some sort of punishment.

  But Wednesday did not say any of this. He simply leaned forward and gingerly placed his feet on the ground, never taking his eyes from the woman standing in the corner.

  They stood there, facing each other. A moment passed, and then Wednesday’s eyes flashed almost inadvertently to the box of toys in the corner then back to the woman’s. Another moment passed.

  “Would you like to play with your toys?” said the woman.

  My toys? He left that hen’s tooth alone for a second, then looked around once more. There was a picture of the Son of God, and a large flower, a picture of some birds, and a picture of a mountain. He recognized everything but the mountain. It was larger than any he had ever seen.

  Another long moment passed as the boy wondered what on earth was going on, and then he took a step, just one, toward the toy box. He waited a moment again, glancing nervously at the woman, as if wondering if he was being tested, and once again received only the most patient of smiles from her.

  Suddenly the woman said, “Well, I will leave you to play. If you want anything, anything at all, you can come and find me downstairs, or just press that button, and I will come up.” She pointed to a small button by the door that said simply: Mother.

  Wednesday stared, then managed the barest of nods, and with that, the woman swept out of the room and he was alone.

  Alone.

  Perhaps for the first time in years. Even the bathroom in his old home had been open, always busy, always filthy, and cluttered with his fellow orphans.

  He looked around the room again as if for the first time. One bed. One bed?

  He thought of Friday, and the woman’s mention of him having his own room. Was this Wednesday’s ‘own room?’

  He dismissed the thought as ridiculous, and turned to the toys. A hammer, a plane, a car, a bird, mostly made of wood but some of metal. But painted. And new.

  He smiled. Questions were for later. Questions were for when he did not have these toys anymore. His smile grew to fill his face and he dug in.

  - - -

  Two hours later, Wednesday had achieved something he had not thought possible before; he was bored of playing. Standing, he carefully placed all the toys back in their box, keeping only one, the plane, which he tucked into the back of his shorts after glancing furtively around the room.

  Walking to the door, he spared a glance at the call button the woman had pointed out, and then he poked his head out. He looked this way and that, up and down the short corridor the room opened out onto. There were several more doors along it like his own. All were open, and now, as he stepped into the hall, he heard other voices for the first time since awakening. Familiar voices.

  Wait, could he hear … he could hear … Friday! He ran from his door to the right, toward the sound of the voice, to a door two down and on the left, and there he was. He stared wide-eyed at his friend, who was doing as Wednesday had been, playing.

  Friday had gotten every toy out, and the entire room was a mass of little enclaves: the car family parked neatly in a circle under the bed, the planes arrayed like they were coming and going from their precarious perch atop the desk, and now some kind of battle ensuing between the planes and the birds, a battle which now paused, magically, as Friday noticed his friend in the doorway.

  “Wednesday!” he said in a shouted whisper, as though he had been found in the kitchen at night.

  They ran to each other, toys flying as they came close.

  “Can you believe it?” said Friday, whispering even more quietly now.

  “No, where are we?” replied Wednesday. “The woman said you were in your room. Is this your room?”

  “She said that to me too,” replied Friday, then even more quietly, and with a sense of awe, “and she said that these are my toys … all of them.”

  It was said like he was revealing a grand plan beyond measure, a conspiracy that rocked the very foundation of everything they believed in.

  “But …” said Wednesday, “I have a room just like it as well.”

  Friday looked surprised. He did not begrudge his friend the same joy he had felt at the thought that this was all his, and he had always planned on sharing it all with his friend anyway, but the scale of his largesse was sharply diminished if his friend had such a treasure trove as well.

  “Where?” said Friday, and Wednesday responded by stepping lightly out of the room and then darting over to his own as if on a covert mission. His friend was close behind him. Friday looked around. The room was virtually identical to his own, but his young eyes took it all in anew, coming to rest inevitably on the toys once more before looking agog at Wednesday.

  “Where are we?” they said as one.

  They had to find out. They crept out into the corridor once more. They looked in the other rooms. They found some of their old friends, and even some of their old schoolyard enemies in other rooms. After some further discussion, they moved off as a larger group to the staircase at one end of the corridor and down it, with infinite care, to the large floor below.

  Here was a wide lounge area, filled with couches and tables, more toys, and windows looking out onto rolling green hills.

  Their entire lives up to that date had been in a shared home, though to call it that would have been generous. Their entire lives had been a shared misery with minimal food, dirty clothes, and too few beds. Two to a bed had been a norm. Friday and Wednesday had slept in the same cot for the last two years. They were as close as twins, with all the rivalry, jealousy, and underlying dependence that bond implied.

  They had hoped for a better life, of course. They had dreamed of more. But their lives had only ever gotten steadily worse, and to expect any different was a leap of faith that even their childish minds were not naïve enough to be capable of.

  But this. This was more than a dream. This was … this was Shangri-La.

  At the bottom of the stairs they turned and saw the woman once more. Some were fearful: had they done something wrong by leaving their rooms? Could they somehow jeopardize this, whatever ‘this’ was?

  But just as before, she had only her infinitely patient smile for them.

  Well, her infinitely patient smile and a few, simple words. “Welcome, children. Welcome to your new home. Explore, if you like. You can go outside as well. When you want to come back just find any path. All the paths lead back to this house. To your new home. But first, if you like, eat.”

  She turned and indicated the room behind her. It was a long, wide country kitchen, an ideal they had never even been exposed to. Wooden countertops lined the walls. Pots, pans, and dishes lined shelves around the wall. Big sinks and a large range were clearly designed to serve a horde of hungry mouths. Their mouths, to be exact. And at the cente
r of it all, a long kitchen table with benches on either side, and on it a plethora of meats, breads, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables like they had never seen before.

  It was theirs. It was all theirs. They had suffered enough and this was their reward. The woman looked on as their instinct overwhelmed their reticence, and they surged forward, giddy with the sight.

  They would have it all, all this. She would give it to them, she thought. But it would come at a price. Her face did not show her sadness, and in truth she did not really feel it either. But behind her infinite smile was an awareness of the contract these children had unwittingly signed, and what it would probably cost them in the end.

  Chapter 19: Tin Can Ally

  The dark sky overhead held an awesome and incredible sight, but Hektor’s and Cara’s eyes were focused on the ground. Hektor was aware of Hekaton’s presence only as a source of light, a new white orb casting its white, lunar glow from its soon-to-be permanent spot above Earth’s equatorial plane.

  Hektor sat on a roof. He was squatting, but the position did not cause him discomfort. His legs were braced, his eyes closed, as he monitored the situation below. Cara was approaching the guard post now. She had been forced to leave her battleskin with Hektor, but the neatly tailored trouser suit she wore in its place was still interwoven with superconductive strands that would proffer some protection in a fight.

  And she had some teeth as well. There was no way they were sending her in there without some kind of weaponry. It was not the dual tri-barrels that Hektor had mounted on his arms, but if anyone forced her into a corner they would definitely feel her.

  “Guten abend. Ich habe einen termin mit Herr Pahr,” she said, in halting but passable German. The guard looked at her without emotion, surveying her. She had practiced a slouch, a gait that belied her years of combat training. These eyes were attuned to spot the telltale signs of such training.

  “Namen?” said the burly man. She gave the name she had been told to give and produced a matching passport. The competence of Ayala’s organization was such that it did not suffer under the guard’s scrutiny. With her credentials validated, his demeanor changed noticeably. A guest of the minister was a guest of the minister.